Looking At Pictures On Your Phone With Google Chrome Is About To Be Much Harder
Google Chrome is removing an industry-standard image format that has become incredibly popular since 2021.
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Google is removing the JPEG XL image support from Chrome. The format, which has been an industry standard since 2021, is known for occupying less space while offering several image quality advantages. These factors helped persuade Adobe photo experts to embrace the technology. But the company is axing the support in favor of a rival it helped develop called AVIF. Meanwhile, Apple browsers use an entirely different photo-viewing format called HEIC.
But there’s a lot more to Google Chrome’s JPEG XL than space savings. The format is made for photography as it does a better job capturing minor details and textures than video-derived formats like AVIF and HEIC. It also improves image quality through HDR support which is why Adobe endorsed it. Facebook has also praised the speed of JPEG XL images, while Intel says it’s the best next-gen photo format option.
While Google Chrome currently supports JPEG XL, it has to be specifically enabled through a slightly technical process. But it was removed in a software update which will wipe the format from new versions of Chrome in the coming weeks. Speaking about the axing via CNET, the search engine giant said it decided to drop the format due to low adoption, insufficient benefits, and an effort to improve existing formats.
The decision was followed by a slew of comments in the Google Chrome feature tracking system in favor of JPEG XL. A longtime advocate of the format who helped create the standard, Jon Sneyers said, “I think it’s quite clear that JPEG XL does bring things that existing formats don’t have.” But the search engine giant is standing firm on its choice and offered no new explanations in the discussion.
But Sneyers, who works at internet a prominent infrastructure company and JPEG XL backer Cloudinary, has some important allies who agree with his stance on Google’s decision to remove support for the format. Speaking about the codec, Senior Engineer at Adobe Eric Chan said he believes JPEG XL is the best available image format for broad distribution and consumption of HDR still photos.
“I’ve done several comparisons with AVIF and prefer JPEG XL because of its higher versatility and faster encode speed,” he said via CNET. That speed is particularly important for Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop customers who tend to export hundreds of images. Adobe also has built JPEG XL support into Photoshop. But like Google Chrome, it has to be manually enabled.
Moreover, AVIF has some drawbacks when compared to JPEG XL. It has a reputation for being slower to create which could slow down online photo slideshows and hamper burst-mode photography on your phone. Although it’s being favored by Google Chrome, AVIF lacks the progressive option that displays a low-quality image on a website before fine-tuning its details. This is something that helps websites load without elements jumping around.
Although Google doesn’t have the power to remove JPEG XL from existence, as the creator of the Chrome browser the company can block its use on the web. So while the industry works through its problems, the decades-old JPEG format gets to keep its place at the center of the photo world for a little longer. And smartphone users should consider increasing the storage space on their devices or clouds.
